for First Baptist Church, Columbus, Mississippi:
THOU HAST BEEN FAITHFUL
Mrs. Georgia Bagwell and her sister, Miss Pauline Phillips, were among the first to
reach the church last Sunday morning. They were here before the time to open
Sunday School. These good ladies live eight miles in the country. They milked
twenty-three cows before they came and attended to putting away the milk, besides doing numerous other chores that go along with keeping a home.
In addition to that it was a bad, rainy morning, as we all recall. What an
inspiration this example of faithfulness is to us and how it should shame many of our people who live within only a few blocks of the church, who have no cows to milk and little to do about the place, but who stayed at home because it was "just too bad to go to church." Does the little poem below fit you?
No pelting rain can make us stay,
When we have tickets for the play,
But let one drop the pavement smirch
And it’s too wet to go to church.
The sacrifice and commitment of those two sisters in Columbus, Mississippi, so long ago redefines faithfulness, doesn't it? In our day, we allow almost anything to prevent us from attending Bible study and Worship. It doesn't even have to be
much at all. It could even be_________ (you fill in the blank).
Someone once said, "Love will find a way. Indifference will make an excuse." Billy
Graham once said, "Jesus spoke about the ox in the ditch on the Sabbath. But if
your ox gets in the ditch every Sabbath, you should either get rid of the ox or
fill up the ditch."
But this is about so much more than being at church on Sunday. It's so much more
than merely being able to say that we were there. It's about our love for our Lord, and our thirst for Him, and our hunger for knowing more and more about Him.
--Rocky Henriques, www.uticabc.com